Running Mom's Motivation

If there is anyone out there besides my darling husband keeping track of this blog you'll have noticed that it has been a long time (over a week) since my last post. There is a simple reason for this. I finished the Crim, and I crashed. I felt awesome after I finished that race and for some reason my body or my mind or both didn't want to run again.

Don't get me wrong, I have been running. I just haven't been enjoying it too much. When I started I didn't enjoy it much either. Sometimes you have to do things because you know you need to not because it feels good. There are many examples of this in life, childbirth is one. Even though I continued to run, I couldn't think about much to write. Of course I could have written "this sucks, I hate this, why the h@*# am I doing this, when will this end, " etc. But I don't think those thoughts are really good for anyone, so I will just keep them to myself.

I took two days off after my race. Maria thinks I should have taken more. Of course Hussam (my neighbor) thinks I take too much time off, but he is a teenager and I swear he has ADHD, so he doesn't believe in rest except when he is sleeping in past noon. I ran Monday, partially on Tuesday, and Wednesday last week. Each run was difficult and I walked a lot. Finally on Saturday I wanted to run and I was instructed by Maria that it was the last day before DWD that I could do a hard workout. So Hussam and I went for a long run.

We were planning on running 14-15 miles, but at the last minute decided to run on MSU's campus. We didn't have a route planned, so we decided to run for a certain amount of time. It was a good run, but a little interesting. It would take less time than I expected to run to a specific spot, so then we would have to loop back. That campus seems big until you have to run on it for over two hours. We also had the problem of having to find bathrooms and places to get water multiple time. So, we pretty much ended up running a crazy route with no rhyme or reason to it. I am glad no one needed to follow us. But it was a really nice run and we were able to go through the gardens on campus. It is absolutely beautiful there. It was nice to get back to the point of wanting to run. When we mapped out our run online it ended up being about 11.5 miles.

Yesterday Hussam and I went for a short easy run. I think I have finally convinced him that he needs to run by himself more. He tends to only run when I go. Since I am much slower than him he isn't making the kind of improvement that he should be. His distance has definitely increased, but I don't think his speed has. At the end of the run yesterday He decided to take off and run the rest of the way home to push himself. He told me later that it "started to hurt " in the end. I think he meant that in a good way. Then he said " I guess when I run with you I'm not doing anything......in comparison to what I should." Boy he knows how to make a woman twice his age feel good.

So this is a just a post to remind all of you that there will be good days and there will be bad days. Whatever your form of exercise, you aren't going to always want to do it. Some days you just need rest and some you need to get out there and do it despite how you feel. When you are at the bottom of the barrel, you have nowhere to go but up!

Total Miles Last Night = 3.6 Total Miles Since Beginning = 476

Posted in: on Tuesday, September 4, 2007 at at 8:02 AM